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NEW GINGER & ROSA. This coming-of-age story from Sally Potter is set in early-1960s Britain, against the backdrop of nuclear-weapons proliferation. At home, 16-year-old Ginger (Elle Fanning) endures her squabbling parents: Dad (Alessandro Nivola) is a “free-thinker” (code, really, for selfish and neglectful) and mum (Christina Hendricks) is unhappily suspended between domesticity and desiring something more. Ginger finds distraction in roaming around the countryside with her best pal, Rosa (Alice Englert), and joining the burgeoning Ban the Bomb campaign. But Ginger’s anxiety about the bombs she fears will destroy her are misplaced — it’s the personal, not the political, that will rock her world. Despite its geopolitical trappings, Potter’s film is a small-scale affair, reflecting the oftenpainful transition into adulthood. The film nicely captures the easy, slightly frantic looseness of being The Place a teen-age girl intoxicated Beyond by a youth shared with the Pines a best friend. But it’s not so surefooted when the betrayals come, where the more experiential nature of the first half gives way to something more melodramatic. The film’s final third finds Potter both overreaching (conflating abstract events into the domestic) and skimping (reaching a conclusion that doesn’t feel wholly earned). Not in doubt is Fanning’s fine performance: She’s been working since she was a toddler, but this is really her breakout role. Starts Fri., April 12. Regent Square (Al Hoff) JFILM. Formerly known as the Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival, JFilm opens its 20th season. Eighteen films — from dramas and comedies to documentaries, all rooted in the Jewish experience — screen at various venues through Sun., April 21. Some individual films are reviewed below. 412-992-5203 or www. JFilmPgh.org for complete schedule.
My Brother the Devil MY BROTHER THE DEVIL. Writerdirector Sally El Hosaini’s debut comingof-age drama is set in the gritty London neighborhood of Hackney; the landscape is dominated by public housing and the streets
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Ginger & Rosa teem with working-class immigrants and their oftenrestless offspring. Among them, two Arab brothers: Rashid (James Floyd), a low-level but charismatic hood, and his adoring, teenage brother Mo (Fady Elsayed). But as Mo pines for the excitement of street life, Rashid seeks to get out, especially after befriending a man from outside his gang. In time, each brother feels betrayed by the other, and any resolution is further compromised by the ongoing cultural confusion of what it means to be an Arab man in contemporary Britain. The plot is a bit shaggy (and some of the mumbled slang hard to decipher), but the two young actors, particularly Floyd, ably carry this material that occasionally threatens to tumble into movie-of-theweek melodrama. Starts Fri., April 12. Harris (AH) THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES. Derek Cianfrance’s (Blue Valentine) drama about fathers and sons, and the choices that relationship inspires (or demands) is told in three interconnected tales. In the first, Ryan Gosling portrays an itinerant stunt motorcyclist who, after discovering he’s fathered a child, decides to stick around Schenectady, N.Y., and be a dad. Drawing support from a weirdo mechanic father figure, he takes to robbing banks to provide cash. On the other side of town, a young, ambitious cop (Bradley Cooper) discovers that the ugly reality of his job creates distance between himself, his young son and the older cops who mentor him. The third act plays out in the future, as the two now-teen-age sons of the cop and the robber collide with the messy history left unfinished by their dads. At times, the work has an agreeable sprawl, particularly in the motorcyclist’s story, where the dead air surrounding his life feels palpable, and is countered only by daredevil behavior, vividly captured in a few verve-filled action pieces. But as Pines goes on, it grows more bloated and even hokey; too many plot points feel convenient to the larger thematic arc rather than organic. Gosling’s story is the most interesting — and he’s an old hand at delivering that wounded-and-dangerous-but-stillcharismatic thing. Cooper simply doesn’t have the acting chops to convey the cop’s emotional struggles, and by the third tale, the two teens are barely more than TV-movie cut-outs, playacting predictable turmoil. Starts Fri., April 12. (AH) COLOR. I loved Shane Carruth’s CP UPSTREAM previous film, the low-budget time-travel morality play Primer (2002), which defiantly teetered between logic and head-scratching because that tension was part of the experience. After nine years, Carruth delivers his second film, which is even more CONTINUES ON PG. 32
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JFilm is a program of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.
FROM THE ACADEMY AWARD -WINNING DIRECTOR OF ®
“SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE” AND “127 HOURS”
++++ SEXY SUSPENSEFUL “
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AND A DAZZLING BRAIN-SCRAMBLING MYSTERY.” EMPIRE
JAMES
McAVOY
VINCENT
CASSEL
ROSARIO
DAWSON
TRANCE A DANNY BOYLE FILM
© 2013 Twentieth Century Fox
STARTS FRIDAY, APRIL 12
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PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH Cinemark Robinson Township The Manor Theatre (800) FANDANGO #2153 (412) 422-7729
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WEST HOMESTEAD AMC Loews Waterfront 22 (888) AMC-4FUN
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